Increase In Government Purchases Research Articles

COMPARATIVE DYNAMICS AND OPTIMAL FISCAL POLICY IN A SIMPLE MODEL OF ENDOGENOUS GROWTH

ABSTRACTI analyze optimal fiscal policy choices in a continuous time endogenous growth model similar to Barro’s. The government uses income taxes from representative ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ households to finance purchases of productive goods and to make transfer payments to poor households. Increases in government purchases can increase the growth rate, while increases in transfers reduce growth. I examine the socially optimal allocation of government resources to purchases and transfer payments and describe conditions under which both the rich and poor would benefit from cuts in entitlements if the savings are used to finance increased government purchases of productive goods.

Fiscal shocks and their consequences

This paper investigates the response of hours worked and real wages to fiscal policy shocks in the post-World-War II US. We identify these shocks with exogenous changes in military purchases and argue that they lead to a persistent increase in government purchases and tax rates on capital and labor income, and a persistent rise in aggregate hours worked as well as declines in real wages. The shocks are also associated with short lived rises in aggregate investment and small movements in private consumption. We describe and implement a methodology for assessing whether standard neoclassical models can account for the consequences of a fiscal policy shock. Simple versions of the neoclassical model can account for the qualitative effects of a fiscal shock. Once we allow for habit formation and investment adjustment costs, the model can also account reasonably well for the quantitative effects of a fiscal shock.

Fiscal Policy Composition, Public Debt, and Economic Activity

This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model i) toinvestigate how changes to different spending and revenue items of the budgetaffect economic activity and public finance; and ii) to evaluate thewelfare costs of alternative fiscal policy maneuvers. The paper shows that,unlike an increase in government purchases of final goods, an increasein public employment and transfers can have a contractionary effect onthe economy in the same way as a rise in tax rates. It also suggests thatfiscal adjustments implemented by cutting spending items increasehouseholds' welfare and are more effective in reducing the primary deficitand public debt than are increases in tax rates.

Government purchases and real interest rates with endogenous time preference

The observation of low real interest rates during periods of high temporary government purchases, such as wars, can be reconciled with the neoclassical growth model extended to allow for endogenous time preference. Temporary increases in government purchases lead to a fall in the instantaneous rate of time preference. This may result in rising investment and falling real interest rates along an adjustment path.

An examination of the effects of government purchases in an open economy

This paper examines the effects of permanent and transitory changes in government purchases in the context of a model of a small open economy that produces and consumes both traded and nontraded goods. The model incorporates an equilibrium interpretation of the business cycle that emphasizes the responsiveness of agents to intertemporal relative price changes. It is demonstrated that transitory increases in government purchases lead to an appreciation of the real exchange rate and an ambiguous change (although a likely worsening) in the current account, while permanent increases have an ambiguous impact on the real exchange rate and no effect on the current account. When agents do not know whether a given increase in government purchases is permanent or transitory the effect is a weighted average of these separate effects. The weights depend on the relative variances of the transitory and permanent components of government purchases.

Government financing decisions and asset returns

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the relation between government financing decisions and asset returns. In particular, the focus is on whether a substitution of debt financing for tax financing of a given level of expenditures is associated with an increase in interest rates. The paper brings a different perspective to empirical investigations of government fiscal policies by examining the response of asset prices in an efficient capital market to such policies rather than focusing on aggregate consumption behavior. The results are consistent with the idea that asset prices are unrelated to how the government finances its expenditures. The results, however, also indicate that the capital market is not indifferent with respect to the level of government expenditures as higher interest rates are associated with increases in government purchases.

Private Sector Effects of Government Expenditures on Nontraded Goods versus Direct Employment of Labor in a Small Open Economy

In this paper an examination is made of the employment and private sector output effects of a tax-financed increase in government purchases of nontraded goods versus an increase in direct fonvernemnt employment. The investigation is made in the onctext of a small open economy model where the governement sector pay a higher real wage than does the private sector. The conclusions are that an increase in government puchases of nontraded goods will lead to higher private sector employment, higher toal employment, and highter production in the private sector than an increase in governement employment.